Friday, December 29, 2006

Sleep Mechanics

What is Sleep, and Why Do We Sleep?Your Crash Course on Brain WavesAh, before we take a step further into the meat of this juicy information, I'd like to giveyou a new understanding, which will make this easier to grasp. You may havealready learned that our minds exhibit a certain brain wave when we're alive. It's notimportant for you to understand how these brain waves work or what they are, it'ssimply a measure of brain activity.The general understanding you may want to have is that brain waves can either get“high” and more intense. Or they can get “lower” and become slower, less intense,and for lack of a better word, lazy.The figure above is a general example of high and low brain waves, and how they might appear on anEEG (electroencephalogram) reading. An EEG is a reading that measures brain wave activity byhooking up electrodes to points on your scalp.The 5 Stages of SleepThere are 5 stages of sleep. Meaning, you're not always having the same experiencewhen you're sleeping, albeit you're not aware that you're having them. As you readabout these, and you allow this new understanding to come into view - you maybegin to realize just how this mechanism may have played a key role in some of thesleepy experiences of your life.When You're Fully AwakeBefore you sleep, you're awake. Duh! But what really happens in your mind whenwe're fully awake? It's at this point that our wakefulness system is at its peak pointduring the day, and our minds exhibit really high brain waves, called beta brainwaves.When we're awake, and in beta brain waves, we are mostly in-tune with our superactive conscious mind, which races from thought to thought, and keeps us on trackwith our daily lives. We'll get into the fun part of understanding the conscious /subconscious mind later on in the “Vivid Dreams – Unlocking Shadow Memories”e-book you received in the downloadable package with this book.Stage 1 SleepWhether you know it or not, you have consciously experienced Stage 1 Sleep allyour life.Can you remember a time when you were drowsing off, day dreaming, or “zoningout” during a boring class or lecture?It's usually during times like these (and you'll learn why) that we enter Stage 1 Sleep.During this stage we exhibit slightly lower brain waves called alpha brain waves,and some theta brain waves. Alpha brain waves are also sometimes called “awakewaves” - because we're still very awake when we're exhibiting them.In this stage our body relaxes, respiration and heart rate slightly drops, and ourminds tend to drift into an altered state of creativity and relaxation, where thoughtsdrip like honey and it feels goooooood to just be there.You can think of Stage 1 Sleep as a “doorway” to your sleep.Stage 2 SleepDuring stage 2 sleep, we experience patterns of brain waves called sleep spindles,and K-Complexes. These are sudden bursts of brain activity. Some scientists thinkthis symbolizes the gradual attempt by the brain to “turn itself off”, in a manner ofspeaking.During this stage we are still very wakable. In fact, during sleep studies, most peoplewoken up out of Stage 2 sleep say “I was still awake.”Stage 3 & 4 (Deep Sleep)During stage 3 and 4 our brain waves reach their lowest frequency, we exhibit verylow brain waves called delta brain waves, and our mind goes back and forthbetween delta and theta brain waves.It's during these 2 stages that we are truly officially “asleep”, this stage is also calleddeep sleep. As we enter deep sleep, our blood pressure, respiration, and heart rate,reach their lowest point of the day. Our blood vessels dilate and most of the bloodwhich is usually stored in our organs during the day travels into our muscles tonourish and repair them.Stage 5 (REM Sleep)Stage 5 Sleep is probably the most fascinating stage of sleep, as scientists still donot know the true purpose of this stage. Stage 5 sleep is also termed Rapid EyeMovement, or REM sleep.During the 1950s a scientist by the name of Nathaniel Kleitman discovered thatwhen people were in this stage of sleep, their eyes moved very rapidly in alldirections. He also discovered that when people were woken up from this stage,95% of the time they said they were dreaming just at that time. This is why REMsleep is also commonly referred to as dream sleep. It's believed that we dreammostly in the REM sleep stage.What happens to our brain waves during REM sleep?As you have learned so far, it would naturally make sense that our brain wavesbecome even LOWER in this stage of sleep - however, the opposite is true. Ourbrain waves rapidly increase, and they're very identical to the ones we exhibit whenwe're wide awake! This kind of makes sense as you think about it - since when weexperience dreams, they often feel so real and vivid it's hard to realize they weren'treal when we finally wake up.... and of course, sometimes when we wake up we tendto wish those dreams WERE in fact real :o)We ALL dream every night; however, not all of us remember our dreams when wewake up. You'll explore a killer technique to remember all your dreams vividly in theHow to Get The the “Vivid Dreams” e-book that came with this book.Sleep CyclesNow that you know the basics of how sleep works, we can explore how deep therabbit hole really goes :o) What is quality sleep?Well, first you may want to understand that the sleep stages explained above don'thappen only once during sleep. They happen multiple times during sleep in what arecalled sleep cycles.During a sleep cycle, we progress from stage 1 to stage 5 multiple times. It wouldseem really complicated to write out how this works, and because I want you tounderstand this and grasp this concept clearly, I've drawn it out for you! Aren’t IGreat? Refer to the graph below, and then we'll go over it in detail.The above graph shows an example of how we progress through the sleep stages, and how muchtime we spend in each stage while sleeping. Note: this graph is just an example, on average weexperience about 6-7 of these cycles every night.So what's happening here? Well, the typical way we travel through our sleep stagesin sleep cycles is as follows:1, 2, 3, 4, 3, 2, REM, 2, 3, 4, 3, 2 REM 2, 3, 4, 3, 2, REM, 2, 3, 4, 3, 2 REM......On average, each one of these cycles takes about 60 - 100 minutes, varying fromperson to person.As you study the graph carefully, you may notice a couple of other things happening1. Notice how the first period of deep sleep is the longest. Notice how the stages ofdeep sleep get shorter and shorter, and eventually non existent towards the end ofthe night.2. Notice how the first duration of REM sleep is very short; notice how these periodsget longer towards the end.The understanding you may get out of this is that sleep gradually gets lighter as thenight progresses.You may have also realized that we don't spend an equal amount of time in eachstage of sleep. You're right, and this is where we'll answer the “What is QualitySleep?” question. Look at the chart below:The above chart shows the amount of time an average person spends in each stage of sleep. Let'stalk about this in a bit more detail.How Important is Deep Sleep?- It's been proven that when we're deprived of deep sleep, we experience ourgreatest day-time impairments, such as drowsiness, nausea, headaches, muscleaches, and trouble concentrating.- When we're deprived of sleep for any irregular amount of time, our body willsacrifice all other stages of sleep to regain “deep sleep”. It's believed this is why ourbody tries to gain as much deep sleep as possible in the first 3-4 hours of our sleep.- Because deep sleep is the first stage of sleep the body tries to get the most of, it'sthe stage least likely to be missed. As you may recall from the previous graph, theperiods of deep sleep were longest in the beginning.- Our immune system also turns on during deep sleep to fight diseases. This is whywe sleep more when we're ill.How Important is REM Sleep?Studies show that when we're deprived of REM sleep, we exhibit certain day-timedifficulties as well, mainly trouble with concentrating, and sometimes drowsiness.However, because the body tries to recover deep sleep first as a result of sleepdeprivation, we can assume that REM sleep isn't as important to restoring ourphysical functions. It's not clearly known what purpose REM sleep serves; however,scientists do have a theory that we absorb most of our daytime learnings duringREM sleep. This would explain why babies spend so much time sleeping, 50% ofthat time in REM sleep.So what is Quality Sleep?As you may have already guessed, quality sleep consists of being able to sleepdeeply. For our minds to easily slide into the deep stages of sleep, and stay there forthe time needed. Easier said than done.So I've got a question for you: What controls how long and how deep you sleep?There's an underlying mechanism in our bodies called our “body clock”. However, Idon't like the name so I will simply refer to it as the sleep clock. Your sleep clock isa system inside of you which controls how you sleep, how deep you sleep, when yousleep, and how awake you feel during the day. Once you understand this systemyou'll be able to take control over your sleep and your energy!The challenge in our society is that our sleep systems have been weakened by somany outside stressors that we're not even aware of, that our sleep clocks are totallyout of whack. This is why so many people can't sleep deeply, why they may sufferfrom insomnia, poor day-time energy levels, or find themselves waking up severaltimes in the middle of the night. Usually when you wake up in the middle of the nightit is at the end of a sleep cycle in Stage 2 or REM sleep when our brain waves arehighest and we're most wakable. This happens because of a weakened sleepsystem.